Jon Stewart dubs NMA animators "Taiwaneers"

Taiwan’s Next Media Animation, that sometimes hilarious, sometimes shocking, but always edgy computer-generated ‘news’ operation in Taipei, has been anointed with a Disneyesque coinage by America’s kind of news comedy Jon Stewart. Even though a recent NMA video mocked Stewart himself for being too chummy with ”Leftwing Socialist President Barack Obama”.

During an August broadcast of “The Daily Show,” Stewart came up witha new nickname for the Taipei animation studio, calling its staffers “Taiwaneers.” Did he mean they are pioneers, animation puppeteers? Or was he comparing them to Walt Disney’s Mousketeers?

Martin De Jonge, a longtime expat in Taipei, told TechEye in a recent email: ”In The Daily Show segment, Stewart took issue with the fact that a Daily Show segment from the week before.

“That’s in which Stewart praises the British parliament for its in-your-face parliamentary discussion following the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal. Its alleged connections to the Prime Minister’s office had actually been censored in Britain, where it is illegal to use parliamentary discussions in a comedic or satirical program.

“He also said that The Daily Show had run into this type of censorship before with its animated portrayal of the royal wedding, attended by Hitler, featuring a honeymoon night, with William sadistically whipping Kate in bed, all brought to life by Taiwanese ‘imagineers’ who he called ‘Taiwaneers’,” De Jonge added.

When Stewart mentioned the word “Taiwanese”, someone in the audience applauded and shouted out in approval. At around 6:12 in the show’s online segment Stewart explains how ‘with the help of our Taiwanese imagineering friends, or as we call them Taiwaneers’ NMA’s viral videos are making an impact worldwide now.

Here’s an old NMA clip of Stewart.

NMA’s ”Taiwaneers” post all of their satire pieces on its website aswell as on YouTube. Most of its audience is in the USA – 46 percent – with the rest in Australia, Taiwan, the UK, and Canada. Long live the Taiwaneers, and a new word has been coined, for better or for worse.